The Independent Smallholders, Agrarian Workers and Civic Party (FKgP) is withdrawing its individual candidates in favor of Jobbik and urging its supporters to vote for Hungary’s radical rightwing party in the April 8 general election, reports Magyar Nemzet.

According to a statement the party sent to the conservative print and online daily, FKgP will ask its members and sympathizers to support Jobbik by voting for their national party list and individual candidates in the election. The statement says that in exchange for withdrawing its candidates in favor of Jobbik, FKgP requires the radical party to reform the justice system and increase support of farmers.

“The corrupt Orbán-cabinet that is openly threatening its own people and willing to build autocracy must be ousted by the Hungarian nation at all costs. To [support] this fight, Fidesz’s former coalition partner FKgP was willing to make even this self-sacrificing step and it urges all opposition parties and their candidates to follow this example,” FKgP’s statement reads.

One of Hungary’s historic (pre-1989) political parties, the 1930-founded FKgP played a key role in establishing the short-lived Second Hungarian Republic after the Second World War. Like other democratic parties of the era, the smallholders eventually fell victim to the growing power of the Hungarian Communist Party. In 1949, the party was absorbed into a People’s Independent Front, led by the communist Hungarian Working People’s Party. The latter prevailed in elections held that year, marking the onset of the undisguised communist rule in Hungary. The Smallholders party was dissolved later in 1949.

FKgP was refounded in 1988 and from then on until 2002 the party ran in all general elections. The party vastly contributed to Fidesz’s 1998 election victory by withdrawing 82 of its candidates in favor of Fidesz. In exchange, Fidesz made FKgP a coalition partner and awarded the agricultural, defense, and environmental protection portfolios to the smallholders. The smallholders left the coalition in 2001 after a series of scandals.

The party resurfaced once more this February with international lawyer Tamás Lattman as its candidate for prime minister.